Board Memberships and Affiliations

Board Member

Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft board member Carol Tait will take on the director's job for 18 months "to bridge a transitional time."

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CAROL TAIT

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That's why, when executive director Mary Miller recently resigned to become director of development for the Louisville Science Center, the museum board named Carol Tait as interim director.

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Tait, 54, who has been a member of the board of directors for the past three years, said her skill lies in transformations, not museum work.

"Both the executive committee, the board and I agreed on this (interim) title for 18 months," she said."… I'm here to bridge a transitional time."And her job in those 18 months, she said, is "to sort out the focus" of the museum.

Personally, she said, she thinks it should concentrate on living Kentucky craft artisans and help them operate more efficiently.

How that will emerge after being filtered through the board and the museum's artist constituency remains to be seen.

Tait said also that she has long felt that the organization, which began as a gallery and has evolved into a museum, needs "a real museum director."

Tait became involved with the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft after moving to Louisville from the Washington, D.C., area when her husband, William Tait, took a new job in sales and field operations with Humana Inc.

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Carol Tait left her job in account management and business development for Watson Wyatt & Co., an international human-resources consulting firm.

Tait said she viewed the move to Louisville as an opportunity "to break away and do different things … in a way I'd never been able."

She became a volunteer.She wanted to know more about art and craft, so she joined the museum's board.In addition to being the interim director, she is still co-chair of the museum's major fund-raiser, the Oct. 7 Bourbon Ball.It has made for some long days in her first week on the job, she said.

Tait said she expects to continue some projects begun under previous boards and under Miller, who led the museum through a capital campaign and into a new building with more than double the space.

One such program is analyzing the sales gallery and its sales patterns to better serve clients, Tait said.

Another is exploring the efficacy of having a smaller board.The board is now down to 33 members from its previous 45.

A new focus under Tait will be to decrease the number of exhibitions -- currently at least 12 per year -- and increase the substance of those selected.

An example is the rescheduling of "What a Way to Go: Dying in Style," an exhibition about the role of craft in funeral practices that was delayed nearly one year, until June 2006, for more work.It's a major exhibit on an unconventional topic and deserves more time to develop, Tait said.